REVIEWS

Know more of Kokoy F. Guevara and reviews about His works by clicking the links below:

Some parting words from Allan Lim about Kokoy’s work:


There's an inherent imperfection to language. Throughout our chatter and books, there are holes that we fill in idly, often blindly, with what we know of this or that day, of the innuendo or private joke. These holes open up the conversation, brighten up the written word. Necessary failures through which we breathe life.her in odd beats of meaning, sometimes gracefully, always pointedly. He'll slip in a subject when we're expecting a verb, or else employ a homonym to start off a whole new phrase -- though not a whole new thought. In this stop-and-start dance, Kokoy grasps at saying what the customary subject-verb can't quite capture.

The idea's not all that grandiose. Or new. What's a lecture that doesn't engage its audience? I clearly remember nodding off during Archeology class, yet giddily treating the lab (Real seeds and artifacts -- and bones, people!) like some police procedural. I also remember Art and Popular Culture, when Professor Norris presented Laurie Anderson’s work with all the lights, music, and slides she deserved.

Would a Celdran tour be the same without the performance? Without some exposure to Rizal or Choc Nut? How about WTF? It'd be like Ice-T without cops, or Harry Potter, a muggle-centric pre-existence. The holes are what let us in, our expectations guiding us to whatever banal or delghtful thing comes next. And they're what keep Deelite or Sampaguita songs from falling like trees in forests, no more than speaker hum and buzz, or The Reddest Herring, just paper, ink, glue.

The poetry in The Reddest Herring's not difficult; they're just not so typical. Un-rhyming, so-subtly metered, ridden with seeming non sequitors. There are clear-enough signposts, sure: Adam, Alice, Errata, Jus Ad Bellum. Easy enough to look up on the phone, if not recall. But in the poem itself, as one line breaks and runs into another, the reading's muddled, confounded. Mischief between an Eden of usual suspects and a Wonderland of offed heads.

Kokoy Guevara can barely finish a thought, one would think, but there's sharp purpose in his poetry. He plays with English, breaks it, puts it back together in odd beats of meaning, sometimes gracefully, always pointedly. He'll slip in a subject when we're expecting a verb, or else employ a homonym to start off a whole new phrase -- though not necessarily a whole new thought. In this stop-and-start dance, Kokoy grasps at saying what the customary subject-verb can't quite capture.

In these breaks from readability, in these gaps, these holes, he has us work a little. We plug in whatever makes sense, sometimes unbidden, sometimes requiring some conscious digging. There might be some flailing involved, but outside the expected order of things, we go beyond expression as equation. It's all a bit messy, but such is poetry, such is language. Make your peace with it, and you just might find the mess making sense the way the Philippines maintains a legibility particular to Filipinos.

Kokoy's neither the first nor alone. Poets are the legislators of language (we lowly p'ose stylists, methinks, would be the judiciary or executive, and no less corrupt), and they can get pretty creative with the law. Bending, sometimes breaking, grammar, vocabulary, history – really anything through and around which words thrive, which is everything – poets have long busied themselves with what does and doesn’t count as verse. Not as chamber-bound politicos, though, but as outlaws in their own right.

They ride as far out as their literary luck can take them, poets. Theirs isn’t the realm of theory but the practical experiment. They push, experiment, fall. There are fizzlings-out. There are explosions, poisonings, misunderstood beasts made of dead men’s parts – none of which are necessarily failures, by the way. E. E. Cummings relied on sheer language; Elizabeth Bishop, on the magic of modern, mundane subjects. Kokoy trades in confounded expectations.

No, he’s neither the first nor alone, but his is his own voice in that colorful spacetime of the grand, the personal, and the cute; in that acid trip between Adam and Alice; in the present moment of presently speaking. From breaks in meter and meaning, he pulls music. His verse dances over uncertain air, nailing the landing. With a flourish, in a shower of what-this-could-mean sparks that we didn’t know were there – not when we began this conversation.

Citing a citation I can’t find, Ursula K. Leguin spoke of words as inert, dead, lost in time, really, until the moment of reading, when they come back to life. They’re otherwise just gathering dust on the shelf, just a number taking up space on a device. They don’t exist, not really. They don’t take part in the living, breathing moment. They can’t begin to make sense until they’ve run through the machine of the reading mind: each word turned over for their definition, the connections between them discerned and parsed, every new phrase leading to new sentences and whole thoughts.

If, as George Szirtes wrote, “poetry is felt not fathomed,” then we can maybe count on this machine as an organ, one that requires no concentration – no thought – but instinct to function. Maybe we can count on it to give us the context, make enough of a jump to get the gist, if not the meaning. And all we’d have to do is read the poem not in our heads but aloud.

So recite it. Loosen up. Speak it. Don’t worry about ‘getting it.’ Sing it. Let whatever scene or story fall into place, however haphazardly. Let whatever figment press its musky flank against you like some dream, some wild imagining you can’t quite put the words to.

Francisco Guevara’s book and poetry competition to be launched
Read More

Call for submission to The Kokoy F. Guevara Poetry Competition
Read More

Francisco Guevara | Cordite Poetry Review
Read More

Stuart Cooke Reviews Francisco Guevara in Cordite Poetry Review
Read More